Obviously you never used GWT to a productive level bro. Swing like syntax is an option in GWT. Not the only one. Ypu can only blame yourself if you end up writing tons of code for the UI in GWT. Like I asked before ever heard of UI Binder ? And what s better in your opinion ? The JSON like syntax of Ext JS ?

Moving GWT to an industry driven forum isn't exactly "disassociation" on google's part. Google still have developers working on GWT. There were still GWT presentations at their last IO conference. And they have internal projects implemented using GWT. This discussion comes up frequently on the Dart forums. It's not "abandoned". At the same time, we're told, many of the GWT developers have moved to the Dart development. They are moving forward, as they should.

We could debated the merits of whether javascipt is, or should be, on its own tedious trajectory of abandonment in this industry. People are finding paths around it.

Just to be clear, I was replying to Ekambos. Didn't want you to think I was being plucky with you.

I know people who still use GWT and they just refuse to see the writing on the wall. They think everything is peachy. It isn't. I also did a lot of Flex work, and Flex / AS3 developers far outnumber(ed) GWT developers. Then Adobe did to Flex exactly the same thing Google did with GWT. Result: both communities are drying up rapidly. When the company that created something basically says "you guys keep having fun with this and we'll toss a few resources at it for a little while, but just FYI, we're done with this because there's better stuff out there now", that's a bad sign.

Obviously you never used GWT to a productive level bro. Swing like syntax is an option in GWT. Not the only one. Ypu can only blame yourself if you end up writing tons of code for the UI in GWT. Like I asked before ever heard of UI Binder ?

The best thing that Google could do with GWT is make it more community driven.
I m registered to the GWT contributors group and looking at the commits that go in every day I cant be more happy. With only Google calling the shots this would have been dead end.
If you see it as Google ditching GWT then it s your opinion.

I know for sure that atleast 50% of fortune 100 companies use GWT.

Those are legacy systems ? FYI google just released a new version of groups a couple of days ago. Same as Adwords and Adsence and Wallet. The only public "new development" at google is Google+. And for obvious reasons GWT was not an option.

Then again if you feel confortable with JS or TypeScript go ahead.
At the end of the day they are all tools.
Use the one that makes you more productive.

For the type of things we are trying to solve at my company and for our customers nothing beats GWT.

+1 for TypeScript definition files.
When trying to sell the vastly superior solution of SPA + API to .NET MVC and even WebForms developers they laugh at no intellisense.

ExtJS has everything to win from being more accessible and easy to use. It would make me more productive as I wouldn't have to look in the docs for every single parameter all the freaking time.

That is all a Typescript definition file would do - improve my performance.

One could also look at this way - there will eventually be a competitor to ExtJS that embraces typescript definition support for it's improved developer performance - and it will win over the stubborn Sencha devs in the end that has some internal holy war over a non-issue.

Adding TypeScript definition files would cause no serious ill side effects, now would it?

Ext4j sounds interesting, but the initial beta was just released, and it's one person, who needs to try and keep up with every change Sencha makes. That's going to be a tall order going forward. And neither Ext4j nor Ext.NET include Touch support.

Ext4j sounds interesting, but the initial beta was just released, and it's one person, who needs to try and keep up with every change Sencha makes. That's going to be a tall order going forward. .

A release candidate of Ext4j should come out pretty soon.
It s true that I have to keep up with every change that Sencha makes but I enjoy it.
It gaves me an unique view in the framework.
Plus I used Ext4j at work too so this is not a proejct that
will go away soon. I make my living with it.

While it s true that I m the only one maintaining it, the project is open source and on GitHub.
I would definitely accept pull requests .
This is actually why I open sourced it. So other people can contribuate to make Ext4j even better.

Originally Posted by brian428

And neither Ext4j nor Ext.NET include Touch support

Ext4j was designed to be compatible with Touch4j(which wraps Sencha Touch) so that you can use both framework in the same project and share code between mobile and desktop.
We use that heavely in our project and hopefuly I can share some stuff soon.
DISCLAIMER : I also created Touch4j

If you want strong typing and great tooling support give Ext4j a try. You might like it

It s true that I have to keep up with every change that Sencha makes but I enjoy it. It gaves me an unique view in the framework. Plus I used Ext4j at work too so this is not a proejct that
will go away soon. I make my living with it.
Alain

Alain, I'm not dismissing your work on Ext4j, you obviously put a lot of time into it. But knowing that you also manage Touch4J actually just adds to my concern. Sencha releases updates to Ext JS and Touch quite regularly, and some of the changes can be quite extensive. I just think that it's going to be very difficult for one person to keep up with that pace of change.

Sencha has a large team of people working on these libraries, and even they also struggle to deal with bugs and ERs. And now, if something goes wrong, folks will first have to determine whether the problem is in the Java wrappers or an actual issue in the underlying Ext JS/Touch JS libraries.

Again, I'm thankful that folks like you do this sort of work. I manage and contribute to a number of open-source projects myself. I'm just trying to explain why a lot of developers (or managers) are going to be hesitant to rely on something like this for production apps.